A federal judge on Monday dismissed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from a lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants who were transported to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on chartered flights in 2022.
“On the present record, the court cannot ascertain what actions were undertaken by whom and therefore cannot determine which, if any, of the individual defendants transacted business or caused injury here, leaving it no choice but to find that, at least on this record, personal jurisdiction has not been established,” the judge stated.
However, Judge Burroughs stated that the illegal immigrants could still proceed with their suit against Vertol, the Florida-based company that was paid $1.5 million to transport illegal immigrants to the island.
The court found that the facts of the case “taken together, support an inference that Vertol and the other Defendants specifically targeted Plaintiffs because they were Latinx immigrants.”
Judge Burroughs also said that Vertol and the other defendants “were not legitimately enforcing any immigration laws” when transporting the illegal immigrants.
“Instead, as alleged, they exploited [Plaintiffs] in a scheme to boost the national profile of Defendant DeSantis and manipulate them for political ends. Moreover, Plaintiffs’ images were captured and sent to national news media,” the judge said.
“Unlike ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents legitimately enforcing the country’s immigration laws ... the Court sees no legitimate purpose for rounding up highly vulnerable individuals on false pretenses and publicly injecting them into a divisive national debate,” she added.
The judge stated that “treating vulnerable individuals like Plaintiffs in this way, as alleged and accepted as true for purposes of the motion to dismiss ... is nothing short of extreme, outrageous, uncivilized, intolerable, and stunning.”
Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) in Boston filed a federal civil rights class action lawsuit in 2022 against Mr. DeSantis, Secretary of Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue, the State of Florida, and their “accomplices, challenging the fraudulent and discriminatory scheme to transport nearly 50 vulnerable immigrants, including women and children, from San Antonio, Texas to Martha’s Vineyard without shelter or resources in place.”
Lawsuit Will Continue
LCR has hailed the ruling as “a major victory” for the affected illegal immigrants.It said that the ruling “sends a crucial message: private companies can—and will—be held accountable for helping rogue state actors violate the rights of vulnerable immigrants through illegal and fraudulent schemes.”
“All other defendants have been dismissed, but only for now. The dismissal is ‘without prejudice,’ meaning that the claims may be reasserted and reinstated,” the organization said in a statement.
“To be clear: the Martha’s Vineyard migrants will not stop here,” it added.
LCR said that they would continue to pursue their claims in federal court against all defendants, “including by seeking jurisdictional discovery to prove the viability of the claims against the dismissed parties.”
